


I Have Your Back

by Aly_H



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime, Death, Developing Friendship, Gen, Gore, Nar Shaddaa is a bad place to grow up, Sibling-like relationship (in the future), Violence, Violence by Teens, Weird tense usage, probably over-tagging but better safe than sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 15:56:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aly_H/pseuds/Aly_H
Summary: A story about two kids surviving Nar Shaddaa's streets together years before they become some of the Republic's finest privateers.---Story is a background shot of my smuggler Claribel Fyre, who becomes the Voidhound, and Locke Dalsa, who will become an SIS agent, and one of the things that lead the two of them to calling each other family.





	I Have Your Back

**Author's Note:**

> Marked this as explicit because of the level of violence described and the age of the participants (as they're all teenagers).
> 
> Please read the tags for warnings! If there was a CW that might have helped you let me know and I will add it immediately.
> 
> The two main characters of this are Locke Dalsa, a Forceblind Sith Pureblood who'd spent most his life on Hutta up until he met the girl who will later take up the name 'Claribel Fyre'. They've shown up in a couple of the shorts I wrote in the "The Stars May Burn" collection if you'd like to see more with them.
> 
> The title refers to this being the point where Clari begins to view Locke as someone she wants to trust and call a friend.

He can taste blood on his lips as he covers the injury with his hand. The knife surprised him – the flash of metal in neon lights and then blood in one his eyes. The one who did it isn’t much more than a kid – _younger_ than Locke is himself.

Stars, he hates Nar Shaddaa.

He was going to die.

At least it wasn’t in a toxic swamp.

The knife raised to attack again. A discharge of a blaster echoes a dull _thwip_.

A bloody chasm burns open through the knife-wielder’s back. His eyes widen in surprise but death comes quickly.

The other attackers are older, more experienced. They spot the shooter first.

Slight framed, short – tiny even. A girl, but a teenager like them. Green eyes glittering in the darkness, a feral, silent snarl pulling at her lips. Something predatory in the expression.

Then she’s gone – or near it.

Through one eye he watches her – he’s seen her fight before. Knows she’s _good_ but the way she moves then – cold, precise, and lethal and _fast_ so very, very fast – that’s different than the brawls and scraps they’ve fought together.

All three who would have killed him lay dead when she finally stilled – no, one was still choking to death on his own blood but he would not last long.

Brown hair, loosened in the fight fell around her face, and with a shuddering breath she sheathed her weapons. A stolen blaster and a knife stamped with an all-too recognizable insignia.

He’d never seen her fight like that before.

He had known though. Or he had guessed.

She’d been running from the Empire. Not a Sith though – she couldn’t use the Force. Expensive cybernetics that had garnered the wrong sort of interest.

A killer, a spy, one of the shadows that people whispered about. Sith you could see coming, but not the Empire’s shadows.

A fate slipped like the collar lost on a bad dice throw.

“Locke?” she crouched, the movement wary and slow so that she didn’t scare him. A spray of green blood from one of the attackers was smeared across her cheek. “Let me see how bad it is.”

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he finally croaked as he let her pull his hand away from the injury.

“I thought I wasn’t either,” the expression difficult to read. Guilt, confusion, frustration, and worry as she prodded the injury. Sadness written in her eyes as she explained: “It’s shallow, some kolto and you’ll be fine, but…it’s going to scar, Lucky. Bad.”

“Locke,” he corrected. “I, I want you to call me Locke.”

“…Clair…” she’d not given him a proper name to call her by in the three _months_ they’d known each other – ‘Shorty’ he’d been calling her for lack of anything better. It took him a moment to realize what it was she was offering him. “My name – it’s Clair. Or, well, that’s as close to a real name as I have.”

The false accent dropped away to the crisp Imperial one. The one that meant you _definitely_ weren’t talking to a Jedi.

He’d heard it the first time he’d met her on Hutta what felt like ages ago but hadn’t been sure that it was the real one – she’d taken a few days to settle on a sort of Republic-spacer accent.

She stood, and offered him her hand, “There’s a med center nearby. I still have the credits. Most of them.”

For all anyone who knew him knew he didn’t shut up he nodded mutely, accepting her hand up and walking beside the shorter girl as they picked their way through the streets.

“…Locke?” she said quietly, the hand guiding him through the streets tightening on his in a way that felt more vulnerable more than strong. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay...you came back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed!


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